Fighting against black mass with prayer

Thank you for the information on the black mass. We simultaneously participated in the Holy Hour scheduled at St. Paul’s in our rural area of Wyoming. It was a family event where we spent an hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament in our adoration chapel. Our two teenage daughters accompanied my husband and I. It was a teaching moment for our girls and a reminder to all of us of the oneness, holiness and universality of our Church. Prayer seemed like the best weapon against such evil.

— Jeanne Anderson, Gillette, Wyoming

Black mass

Re: “Under threat of satanic ritual, Church counters with prayer” (Openers, May 25).

Even though Harvard President Drew Faust mistakenly defended the right of the students associated with the Satanic Temple to hold a black mass, she’s to be commended for joining the Holy Hour. This was a wonderful prayerful way to counter this event.

In my local newspaper in suburban Philadelphia it’s disheartening that only a few Catholics have objected via online comments to this event. Several people have made disparaging remarks. Most objectionable, one man compared receiving the body and blood of Christ sacramentally to cannibalism. Very sad that anti-Catholicism is alive and well.

— Tim Donovan, via online comments

LCWR strays

As everyone who has eyes to see knows, this group is dying. Their feeble attempts to lead others astray — especially the young — down the path of dissent that they are on is futile. Young Catholics are not interested in dissent, which is why these unfaithful orders are dying. If a young person doesn’t believe in the Catholic Faith, he or she leaves the Church. Why stay and fight as Protestants in the Catholic Church when you can just join (or create) a church that agrees with you? Theirs was once a noble calling to a faithful order; now they have bitten the hand that feeds them and are on the brink of extinction.

— Paul Johns, via online comments

Why Spanish?

I love the idea and support this effort. My only problem is: Why are they using Spanish as the name of the school? This is the United States, where the lingua franca is English. Why are we purposely creating divisions in America with a name in Spanish? Why not Latin? It’s a neutral language and the language of the Church. Or English? Just because some of the students come from a Spanish-speaking background doesn’t mean we have to recreate the entire environment from whence they came.

We are a melting pot — i.e., we all assimilate to a degree or other. I’m completely miffed at this. As the son of Mexican immigrants, I deplore this corrosive and idolizing of misguided political correctness.

— Tito Edwards, via online comments

Special meaning

One letter-writer wrote about the word “consubstantial,” which has been restored in the Creed that we pray during Mass. The writer indicated that the word is not understandable today, and she prefers the fairly recent translation “one in being.”

It helps a great deal to accept the word “consubstantial” if one knows that this one word is, indeed, a very ancient word that has been used in the Church since AD 451 and cannot be adequately translated from the Latin into English to express what it really means: all in one word. Consubstantial indicates a unique relationship between the three persons of the Holy Trinity to which “one in being” just doesn’t do justice.

What should be done is to educate Catholics regarding why the Church went back to this unique word that has been used ever since the Council of Chalcedon! (See: Catechism of the Catholic Church, Nos. 245, 247.)